God’s blessings are hard to see when you wake up with gum stuck in your hair! That’s (kind of) how the book, Alexander’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, begins!
Have you ever had a day when it seemed like even your dog hates you?
Today we will look at someone who had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. We know him as King David, take a moment to read his story:
Can we agree, that’s a bad day?
But the context is even worse. David was fleeing from a King who wanted to kill him. He was living in a cave with a group of malcontents. An invading army had burned his village, taken his family hostage and now his men wanted to stone him to death.
Not a banner day in anyone’s book.
At the point where most of us would throw in the towel, we read in verse six, “but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God!”
When we are having a bad day, there are not a lot of people waiting in line to encourage us. It intrigues us that David encouraged himself in the Lord. Our problem is, it does not say how he did.
We look for answers to life’s deepest questions in Facebook posts or blogs of 500 words or less! But have you noticed, that’s not how God works?
To discover how David encouraged himself, we need to dig a little deeper. Whether we are walking the deepest valley or just a bit of a funk, we all need encouragement in the Lord from time to time.
I. We Need To Remember God’s Faithfulness
Sometimes to move forward, we need to look back.
There are times the giants we are facing, cause us to forget Gods faithfulness. The armies of Israel had done so as they cowered in the valley of Elah.
When David understood the situation, he volunteered to fight the giant. The King doubted David’s ability because of his youth. But David rehearsed how God had been faithful to him in the past.
The bottom line for David was, “My God has never let me down in the past and that won’t change today. This so-called giant is but an ant to my God!”
It’s encouraging when we are in a valley to rehearse God’s faithfulness! Try writing down the times God has been faithful to you, meditate on them and share them with someone else.
II. It’s Encouraging When We Remember God’s Blessings
We don’t realize how blessed we are! You are reading this on a computer or phone that cost more than many people in our world make in a year. We are thinking about what, not if we will eat today. That’s more than multitudes in our world can say.
We would know how blessed we really are, if we would take time to be thankful for our blessings! If we are not, God may remove them to accomplish His purposes in our lives.
We will see our blessings clearly when we stop looking for them in the world around us. As Christians, our satisfaction will only be found in His blessings!
[bctt tweet=”We will see our blessings clearly when we stop looking for them in the world around us.” username=”michaelkduff”]
III. Discouraging Time Flee When We Remember God’s Promises
God’s promises should be our greatest encouragement! Our world makes promises it can never keep. But God has made incredible promises to us as His church!
Is it possible the reason we struggle through so many bad days, is we are more excited about the world’s promises than we are about God’s promises?
When David had encouraged himself in the Lord with God’s faithfulness, blessings and promises, it changed everything. In the next few verses the men who were about to stone David to death, followed him into battle.
They defeated the enemy and took back everything that was taken from them.
Let’s be encouraged in the Lord our God and take back what the enemy has taken from us!
Good post Mike. Great thoughts.